How deal on Korea nuclear program was cut / Bush, Kim Jong Il both gave ground to permit a pact

James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, February 14, 2007

The complex agreement for halting North Korea's nuclear weapons program emerged only after each side agreed to do something that, until the announcement on Tuesday, had seemed all but impossible.

North Korea, which proudly announced in October that it had tested a nuclear bomb, will start dismantling a weapons program it once said was essential to its future, while the United States will be providing economic aid and building ties to a government that President Bush once said was part of an "axis of evil."

That is why many experts expressed skepticism but still embraced the deal because it involved softening hard line positions on both sides.

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"This is not a breakthrough and it is not a new era," said James Lilley, a U.S. ambassador to China and South Korea during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "This is more of the same. But it's also potentially important. We got the North Koreans to do something they don't want to do, and in Washington there's acceptance that we have to buy them off."

Others noted that, particularly in Washington, the deal signified a major shift.

"The Bush administration has been dragged kicking and screaming into these negotiations, but I think the administration concluded it had no choice," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. "The only alternatives to this are drift or confrontation, and neither of those is acceptable."

The deal announced in Beijing on Tuesday has many elements in common with a 1994 accord with North Korea, called the Agreed Framework, that collapsed with bitter exchanges in 2002 after the Bush administration said Pyongyang was cheating.

Now, as was the case in 1994, the overall package offers the desperately poor North fuel oil and other economic assistance in return for shutting its nuclear weapons plants.

The deal announced in Beijing has several important new features -- for example, the North Koreans have agreed not just to freeze a reactor and facilities for extracting plutonium, as in the first deal, but to eventually dismantle them, under international supervision.

Washington has offered not just promises of greater economic aid in return, but concrete steps toward eliminating trade sanctions, normalizing diplomatic relations and reducing tensions in the region. It is a step-by-step process that could take years, and that could easily unravel.

In addition, the deal directly involves other key countries in the six-party talks, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. China, in particular, has been a critical player in the process, applying great pressure on Pyongyang to come to terms.

The result is that a government the Bush administration once was eager to see collapse would be removed from the list of countries regarded as sponsors of terrorism, while U.S. companies would be able to invest in and trade with the North.

"This does change the scenery," said Lilley.

Some hard-liners reacted angrily to the announcement, seeing the deal as appeasement of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

John Bolton, who helped shape the early Bush administration policy as a senior State Department official and then as ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the arrangement on CNN.

"It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world: 'If we hold out long enough, wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded,' in this case with massive shipments of heavy fuel oil, for doing only partially what needs to be done," Bolton said.

But the White House defended the deal, in part by arguing that including North Korea's neighbors provides more pressure.

"There is considerably more leverage on the North Koreans by virtue of the fact that you have the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Russians also involved here," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "They're answerable not merely to the United States, but in fact to their own neighbors who are significant stakeholders in this."

What also seems to have influenced both Washington and Pyongyang is that the stakes are much higher now, for both countries.

The United States is mired in a war in Iraq and is facing growing tensions with Iran, so it can ill afford any hint of a military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. Since the old agreement was discarded, North Korea has not only produced a modest stockpile of weapons-grade fuel -- perhaps enough for 10 bombs -- it exploded a test bomb in October, demonstrating a growing degree of sophistication, and an increased threat for the United States.

The North is facing great economic deprivation at home because of its diplomatic isolation and a threat that China, its closest ally in the region, will cut off critical economic assistance and fuel shipments. The United States also froze bank accounts in Asia that were critical to the government.

"The North Koreans had to do this to placate the Chinese," said Carpenter.

Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the UC-run weapons lab in New Mexico, has visited North Korea twice, both before and after October's nuclear test, and he was even allowed to hold a jar of radioactive plutonium intended to convince him of Pyongyang's capabilities. Hecker said that whatever the deal's shortcomings, it holds the promise of arresting a nuclear program that is rapidly growing in size and sophistication.

"It's a very small step overall in this long game toward denuclearization, but I see it as a very positive sign," he said.

Hecker said that not only would the deal, if it is implemented, shut a North Korean reactor that is producing enough plutonium for one new bomb a year, it would also halt construction on a far larger reactor he had visited that could produce at least 10 times that much.

The deal also would prohibit Pyongyang from conducting any more underground tests. Such tests, he said, would be critical for the North Koreans to learn how to miniaturize the weapons enough to place them on a missile to shoot at a target, something it is probably not capable of doing yet.

Also, Hecker said, with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, allowed into the country, and the prospect of greater trade, the North Koreans would have far less incentive to sell some of their plutonium to Iran or a terrorist group, which Hecker said is the greatest threat the United States faces from Pyongyang.

"Exporting plutonium is a great risk," said Hecker. "Stopping that to me is worth paying a big price. This was a good move because it contains the threat."

David Albright, a nuclear expert and director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, returned from a visit to North Korea on Feb. 3. He said officials there were eager for a deal with the United States, but that they insisted the United States and its allies would have to eventually construct commercial power reactors in the North to satisfy its energy needs, something the Bush administration has not agreed to.

But Albright added that the officials also said they want assistance in developing the country's nuclear-medicine capabilities, giving Washington some leverage.

"Is this bribery? Yes," said Lilley. "Is this blackmail? Yes, I guess. There will be walkouts and cheating and tantrums, but this is a formula that has a chance of success. We have to win this one."

Accord timeline

-- Within 30 days: Five separate working groups meet on denuclearizing, normalizing U.S.-North Korea relations, normalizing of North Korea-Japan relations, economy and energy cooperation, and peace and security in Northeast Asia.

-- Within 60 days: North Korea shuts and seals its main nuclear reactor and related facilities at Yongbyon, accepts U.N. monitors, discloses a list of its nuclear programs and receives energy assistance equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.

-- Future steps: North Korea receives further energy or other aid equivalent to 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil in return for irreversibly disabling the reactor and declaring all nuclear programs.